The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the establishment of a line of steamers bringing Manila within thirty days of Barcelona was the most important event in the history of the Philippines since the conquest, and it had the gravest consequences. It greatly stimulated the trade of the Philippines, but it enormously increased the number of Spaniards in the Islands. Hordes of hungry-looking Iberians arrived by every steamer with nominations to posts for which most of them possessed no qualification. It seemed as if all the loafers of the Puerta del Sol and the Calle de Alcalá were to be dumped in the Philippines and fed by the Treasury. Places had to be found for them, and a bureaucratic administration partly copied from French practice, was rapidly substituted for the old paternal régime. New departments were organised or the old ones greatly extended. Far more money was spent on the salaries of engineers and assistant-engineers than on public works. The salaries of the officials of the Woods and Forests exceeded the revenue derived from dues on timber cut in the Crown forests, and their regulations seriously interfered with the privileges of the natives previously mentioned, and caused great discontent. The salaries of the Inspectors of Mines were almost a useless expense, for there was no revenue derived from mines, in fact there were no mines, only placers and washings. A medical service was organised at great cost and to little advantage. Doctors were appointed to reside at the hot springs, and one could not take a bath there without paying a fee. Model farms and Schools of Agriculture were started, to find places for more Spaniards, for the officials received their salaries, but no funds were forthcoming for material or establishment. In 1886 there took place the separation of the executive and the judicial functions, and eighteen civil governors were appointed to the principal provinces. Later on, eighteen judges of first instance were nominated to these same provinces. After centuries of rule, the Alcaldes Mayores were abolished. Then came a period when certain bureaucrats in Madrid conceived what they thought a vast and patriotic idea. They founded a school of politicians who called themselves Asimilistas. Their grand idea was to assimilate the administration of the Philippines to that of the Mother Country. They thought it wise to assimilate the institutions of a tropical dependency with eight millions of native inhabitants, of whom one-sixth part were independent heathen or Mahometans, to the gradually evolved institutions of Old Spain.